Hell comes home to Jersey. Seven ancient demons known as the Fallen have awakened in Newark, New Jersey, after 100 years. Fortunately for Mike and Ann, so has the one man who can stop them, Joseph Miller. Trapped in a hospital filled with mythical monsters, only together can they unravel the mystery of the Cursed and escape with not only their lives but their very humanity. Ancient Awakening is a horror/action novel with just the right touch of comedy....

Ancient Enemies: The Ancient, Book 2

Joseph Miller and Mike Samson are closing in on one of the Fallen on the busy streets of New York City, with the help of a young woman who just happens to grow fur and fangs. Little do they know that someone from Miller's past is hunting them, intending to settle a grudge over a thousand years old. Meanwhile, Lizzie Namgung is desperately searching for her missing friend, Ann. Much to her surprise, so is the FBI. As a new evil spreads across the city of Newark, Lizzie finds herself caught in a web of murder, mayhem, and monsters.

Ancient Revelations: The Ancient, #3

A father's worst nightmare. A new hero's greatest challenge. A deadly secret. And one crazy demon hunter....A cunning trap, a hundred years in the making, is about to be sprung by Joseph Miller and his companions, Mike Samson and Ann Melakh. Surrounded by enemies and betrayed by friends, the demon hunters find themselves in the fight of their lives.

The Last Nephilim

Is it possible that the mythical gods of polytheistic Greece, Egypt, Assyria, etc. were actual people that lived shortly after the flood of Noah? The Last Nephilim is a work of historical fiction based upon the first chapters of the book of Genesis and several ancient apocryphal texts. The Bible presents the sons of Noah as monotheistic followers of the God of the universe. So how did their grandchildren end up reigning over polytheistic empires? What happened?

Predatory Instinct: A Thriller

The fossilized remains of a previously unclassified hominin species are discovered in the Altai Mountains, prompting teams of scientists from around the globe to converge upon this isolated region of Siberia in search of further evidence to corroborate the revolutionary theory that a third protohuman ancestor coexisted with Neanderthals and primitive Homo sapiens. What awaits them is anything but extinct.

The Black: A Deep Sea Thriller

Under 30,000 feet of water, the exploration rig Leaguer has discovered an oil field larger than Saudi Arabia. The oil is so sweet and pure, nations would go to war for the rights to it. As the team starts drilling one exploration well after another in their race to claim the sweet crude, a deep rumbling beneath the ocean floor shakes them all to their core. Something has been living in the oil, and it's about to give birth to the greatest threat humanity has ever seen.

A Soul to Steal

A serial killer on the loose, two reporters in his sights, and a legendary ghost haunting the town...How far would you go to catch a serial killer? For two local reporters, the cost may be their souls. Lord Halloween, a vicious murderer who targeted Loudoun County, Va., twelve years ago, has returned. Quinn and Kate, two community journalists, race uncover his identity before a promised bloodbath on Halloween. But to stop him, they may unleash a far darker threat - and pay an unimaginable price.

The Dead Man Vol 1: Face of Evil, Ring of Knives, Hell in Heaven

Matthew Cahill is a simple man leading a quiet life... until he is tragically killed in an avalanche at a ski resort. Three months later his corpse is found and sent to the morgue - but then something inexplicable happens. He wakes up. Now he can see evil... as a festering rot that eats people alive from the inside out. And he can see Mr. Dark, the horrific figure who gleefully spreads it like a plague... and whois the only one who can tell Matt whether he is still a man... or the walking dead.For Matt, each day is a journey into a supernatural world he knows nothing about....

Band of Demons: The Sanheim Chronicles, Book 2

Quinn O'Brion and Kate Tassel, two community journalists, tapped into a dark power last Halloween in order to stop a vicious serial killer. But they are still grappling with their new abilities--and wondering if what they unleashed may soon consume them.

While they confront what they have become, a new threat is hunting them--a force that could destroy their whole town.

Tortured Dreams: The Dreams & Reality Series

When the US Marshals Serial Crimes Tracking Unit comes knocking at Aislinn Cain's door, she is given a chance to use her past to save other people's futures. She has survived attacks by two different serial killers and devoted her life to studying the darker side of human history. A new killer is using medieval torture methods to slay his victims. She can give them a glimpse into his twisted world, but not without a cost.

Ghoul

June 1984. Timmy Graco is looking forward to summer vacation, taking it easy and hanging out with his buddies. Instead his summer will be filled with terror and a life-and-death battle against a nightmarish creature that few will believe even exists. Timmy learns that the person who’s been unearthing fresh graves in the cemetery isn’t a person at all. It’s a thing. And it’s after Timmy and his friends. If Timmy hopes to live to see September, he’ll have to escape the Ghoul.

Innocents Lost: A Supernatural Thriller

A young girl vanishes in broad daylight on her tenth birthday. Her father, FBI Special Agent Phil Preston of the Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Team, devotes his life to finding her and discovers a pattern in a recent string of abductions. Dr. Les Grant leads a group of graduate students into the Wyoming wilderness in search of an unidentified Native American medicine wheel photographed by an anonymous hiker. Instead, they stumble upon a macabre tableau of suffering.

Child of Fate: Blades of Leander, Book 1

Early winters and distant cities make the northern reaches fit only for adventurous homesteaders. Alto is on the verge of becoming such a man when his father is ambushed by monstrous raiders from the mountains. Determined to find help for his father Alto leaves his home behind and sets out with a group of adventurers tasked with learning the true nature of the raids. Help for his family grows more and more distant as the boy is swept up into a budding war with a neighboring nation and the threats of evil forces from the mountains.

The Supernaturals

Seven years ago, Professor Gabriel Kennedy's investigation into paranormal activity at Summer Place ended in tragedy, and destroyed his career. Now, Kelly Delaphoy, the ambitious producer of a top-rated ghost-hunting television series, is determined to make Summer Place the centerpiece of an epic live broadcast on Halloween night. To ensure success, she needs help from the one man who has come face-to-face with the evil that dwells in Summer Place, a man still haunted by the ghosts of his own failure. Disgraced and alienated from the academic community, Kennedy wants nothing to do with it. But Summer Place has other plans....

Fallen: Descendants Saga, Book 1

A heavenly war rages among the Fallen that threatens to tear Victorian era England asunder. As the Descendants of these angelic warriors take sides in the escalating conflict, Brody West arrives with his father from America, only to find that his role in this firestorm is far greater than he ever could have imagined!

The Descendants Saga answers Where the creatures of mankind's myths and legends really came from...and their plans to subjugate humanity and dominate the world!

Vigilante of Shadows: Scarlet Rain, Book 1

Aodhan clutched uselessly at his head, groaning. He knew it was useless, because the voice was not inside his head. It followed him, skimming across buildings and land. It had followed him since he was sixteen, and it still followed him today, like a memory too horrific to be forgotten… Aodhan is a shadow-demon, hardened and cold after years of being alone, after his love, his Entwined, was cruelly taken away from him.

Sam

When washed-up priest Angela Murs and skittish ghost hunter Tim Golding are summoned to a vast country manor to help a sick little boy, they have no idea what to expect. While it's clear that young Sammie is a very disturbed child, there's surely no way he could have been behind the recent spate of accidents or the death of his father. The child is dirty, malnourished, and perhaps the victim of a negligent mother, but as Angela and Tim's investigations take them deeper into the mystery, they realize there is much more going on than they ever could have imagined.

Balance: The Divine Book One

My name is Landon Hamilton. Once upon a time I was a twenty-three year old security guard, trying to regain my life after spending a year in prison for stealing people's credit card numbers. Now, I'm dead. Okay, I was supposed to be dead. I got killed after all; but a funny thing happened after I had turned the mortal coil...

The Light at the End

An adrenaline-charged tale of unrelenting suspense that sparks with raw and savage energy... The newspapers scream out headlines that spark terror across the city. Ten murders on the New York City subway. Ten grisly crimes that defy all reason -- no pattern, no m.o., no leads for police to pursue. The press dubs the fiend the “Subway Psycho”; the NYPD desperately seeks their quarry before the city erupts in mass hysteria. But they won't find what they're looking for.

The Lost Girls

The only thing hotter than the summers in Phoenix is the temper of a police detective who can't figure out why young girls keep disappearing. Katalina Wimple is that detective. Her obsession with the missing girls makes her the best person for the job, but it also serves as a refuge from the problems in her own life. Battling her own demons offers coincidences impossible to ignore.

Crimes Against Magic: The Hellequin Chronicles, Book 1

How do you keep the people you care about safe from enemies you can’t remember? Ten years ago, Nate Garrett awoke on a cold warehouse floor with no memory of his past and the only clues to his identity were a piece of paper with his name on it and a propensity toward magic. Now he’s a powerful sorcerer and a successful thief for hire, but it turns out that those who stole his memories aren’t done with him yet. When they cause a job to go bad, threatening a sixteen-year-old girl, Nate swears to protect her.

The Red Church

For 13-year-old Ronnie Day, life is full of problems: Mom and Dad have separated, his brother Tim is a constant pest, Melanie Ward either loves him or hates him, and Jesus Christ won’t stay in his heart. Plus he has to walk past the red church every day, where the Bell Monster hides with its wings and claws and livers for eyes. But the biggest problem is that Archer McFall is the new preacher at the church, and Mom wants Ronnie to attend midnight services with her.

Ghostly Attachments: Haunted, Book 2

It isn't the chair rocking by itself that sends the young family fleeing in the middle of the night. It's when it stops rocking and all hell breaks loose. This family needs help. Enter PEEPs (Paranormal Entity Exposure Partners), armed with the latest hi-tech gear and the ghost communication abilities of Mia Cooper. But this isn't a normal case. Some of the ghosts aren't playing fair. Some of them are armed.

Give the Devil His Due: The Sanheim Chronicles, Book 3

In Give the Devil His Due, Kate's only hope to save Quinn is to trust the man who took him from her. Don't miss the epic finale to the trilogy that has listeners raving about its great characters, plot twists and deft combination of urban fantasy, mystery and suspense.

Publisher's Summary

Hell comes home to Jersey. Seven ancient demons known as the Fallen have awakened in Newark, New Jersey, after 100 years. Fortunately for Mike and Ann, so has the one man who can stop them, Joseph Miller. Trapped in a hospital filled with mythical monsters, only together can they unravel the mystery of the Cursed and escape with not only their lives but their very humanity.

Ancient Awakening is a horror/action novel with just the right touch of comedy. It is the first book in the series The Ancient, which follows the adventures of eccentric demon hunter Joseph Miller. His job is to defend the human race against seven mythical demons and their offspring. Unfortunately for us, he has been dead for the last hundred years.

I found Laube's books online by accident and loved both of them instantly. In "Miller" as the immortal defender of humanity who doesn't know what a pen or movie is, Laube has created a great protagonist who manages to be both hero, comedian, and flawed human who still comes out on top even when he loses. I have read and listened to these many times while waiting for the next book in the series to be released (I also follow Laube on Facebook for more tidbits from upcoming stories). I wasn't looking for these stories; I was just stumbling around the net, but I'm really glad I found these audiobooks.

The audiobook tells us a story about an ancient champion of mankind, who slays monsters in a hospital in New Jersey. While this is the very core of the story, it Matthew Bryan Laube tells this story mostly through the eyes of three characters the Ancient One (Joseph Miller) a cop (Mike Samson) and a Biology Ph.D. student (Ann Melakh). This first person perspective enhances the action and characterization of each of these three characters, which helps elevate this story above a rather straightforward and unsurprising story.

The introduction to the story is less then interesting telling us of the last encounter Joseph Miller had with the monsters. The story picks up as soon as the book moves to modern times and we get involved with the two other characters Mike and Ann and from here it slowly build up until all three characters are at the hospital, the scene of most of the book. Here the monsters begins to rampage and our main characters must struggle (or lay wasteto many monsters in Joseph Miller's case) to survive. It is here the author truly shine and he lifts the audiobook up and makes it an interesting action story. The monsters here are all named after classical monsters (werewolves, vampires, banshee, demons) but are in most ways very different from the classics making them much better at fitting into the tale.

The story seems to want to be a horror story, but falls short becoming more an action story with monsters, where modern technology, usually in the form of guns, blows apart one monster after another setting humans nearly on par with the monsters. Here the character of Joseph Miller again stands apart doing most of his work with blunt objects (like the surgical cast he wears in the beginning), underlining how much different he is from everyone else.

The audiobook ends with setting up the story threads for the next book in the series and the author does an decent job at this and still manages to keep it brief.

B. J. Harrison narrates the story expertly and is able to draw out the essence of each of the main characters making them feel different to the listener, and with his help the audiobook becomes truly interesting and involving.

Overall this is an decent book I can recommend to people interested in action with a touch of the supernatural. The author clearly excels in writing action scenes and uses this to his advantage throughout the book. The narrator takes the story and in the best storytelling tradition makes it come alive for the listener.

Would you say that listening to this book was time well-spent? Why or why not?

The book was too short and read like a short story. The overall story was good and the only reason I downloaded it was because it was a free book off Amazon. The Narrator really did kill the story though.

How did the narrator detract from the book?

The narrator's accent was very distracting. He had some sort of British accent that he was trying to cover up with an American dialogue.

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